The Right to Party Left Intact

“The city put the wrong signs up…’no alcohol at Kate Sessions Park’…that’s illegal,” said a concerned Pacific Beach resident on the afternoon of June 7. “Park and Rec were anticipating a ban — that is my guess — and jumped the gun and had a sign made.”

At the park were two new brown metal signs: one planted at the edge of the park near the corner of Lamont and Loring; the other off to the right, just inside the entrance to Kate Sessions Park.

The signs declare six regulations, which include: no camping, no littering, no fires, no motorized vehicles, dogs must be leashed, and the words “No Alcoholic Beverages” under an image of a bottle behind the international symbol that means “no.” A photograph of one of these signs was posted to a Kate Sessions–related Facebook page on June 6, just before 8 p.m.

“The City said they’d remedy this by the end of the business day,” said the Pacific Beach resident who’d informed me of the City’s action. At approximately 4 p.m., a woman named Angel, a representative of the Pacific Beach Rec Center, arrived and began peeling the “No Alcoholic Beverages” segment from the sign at the corner of Lamont and Loring.

When asked who had given the approval to post the signs, Angel replied, “The City…well, what it was, ma’am, this sign was…we had a different sign up here, we had a sign that said 8 to 8… So, don’t know how it happened.”

“And so this one, the wrong one, went up when?” I asked.

“I just got a phone call today,” said Angel.

“And do you know there’s another sign up there, too?” I asked.

“Up at the playground, yep,” said Angel, pointing in the general direction of the second sign.

“And are there anymore, or just these two?” I asked.

“That I know of, these are the only two,” said Angel.

When our conversation concluded, I relocated myself just inside the park’s entrance and waited for over an hour for Angel to remove the second “no alcohol” sign, but Angel never arrived. A photograph taken later that evening indicated that the second “no alcohol” sign had not been removed by the end of the day.

Calls placed to Clay Bingham and Cathy Anzuoni, deputy director and district manager, respectively, of this particular community parks division, have not been returned.

The people Voted and PropD and it excluded specific parks. If they want to have a revote on PropD and let the Citizen's of San Diego vote for a more REASONALBE LAW like- No Alcohol on Major Holiday's then everyone will stop going to Kate Sessions Park.

Well, aside from the fact that I believe certain residents of KSP simply want it to be their own personal backyard, the real issue at hand is this: Why was signage even made before a ban was passed? Dirty local politics. I would very much like to know the name of the company that sold the signage, this is precisely where the trail will lead to.

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read the last paragraph about how this dept makes signs for parks and rec.

So therefore the question must be who in the dept of parks and rec ordered the new signs? why? and under whose authorization were the old 8-8 signs changed? You are right, something smells very bad here.

"Odd-shaped signs, like Stops, Yields and School signs, are ordered from commercial sign vendors who have the technical equipment required to cut aluminum panels and make the signs. The sign shop orders almost 1,000 signs every month from sign vendors."

I worked almost five years for a company that made signage, among other things. We did plenty of work for the City of San Diego, and not all of it was odd-shaped stuff. This could easily have come from a vendor. It did not come from the place I once worked.

You're missing the point, patiklee. The entire issue about banning booze in KSP isn't as much the booze ban as it is the way it happened. Of course, everyone was assured by the Parks Committee that everything was done "by the rules" and that the ban wasn't a foregone conclusion before it was put to a vote, passed, and implimented. Obviously, this was not the case.

Jacob Pyle was the man who spearheaded the pro-alcohol coalition during the election to vote on whether alcohol should be allowed at the beach a.k.a. Proposition D. Pyle had good intentions. But the minute I first became aware of his campaign strategy I knew his side wouldn't win. Simply put he fell far short of using the media to his advantage. Pyle and his team did not draw up campaign commercials that might have given his side an edge. His campaign strategy that he tried to sell to the public was based solely on freedom and liberty while there were several other more potent angles he could have used to his advantage that him and his team completely overlooked. With the PB Block Party gone and drinking not allowed at the beach I must say that if you just moved here you don't know what you missed. It was great fun. And I say that as a 57 year old beach resident who rarely drinks alcohol to begin with. Kate Sessions? That's a very nice park. But when it comes to the future of alcohol I don't care what they decide to do with Kate Sessions, either way it doesn't matter. The outdoor portion of PB/MB is pretty much effectively watered down thanks to District 2 city councilman Kevin Faulconer. Faulconer had s strong hand in eliminating the PB Block Party and in banning alcohol at the beach. If you just moved here: too bad you missed it.